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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

When my family first moved to Clearfield, Utah, in 2003, I was lonely and needing a friend. Thankfully, I found one in a neighbor and fellow church member (Stacy) who lived just down the street, and we have enjoyed a steady friendship ever since, despite the fact that they moved away from Utah years before we did. Our move to Washington, however, brought us within 3 1/2 hours of each other, and we have found many excuses to burn up the road between Portland and Seattle since then!

Back in 2011, I refinished a table for Stacy’s family, seen here. Shortly thereafter, though, they added a fifth child to the family—and there was no room for him to have a seat at the table! In addition, a small antique table didn’t really provide enough room for both plates AND food, so it was time for a change.

Enter the “wide” farmhouse table. The space for a table was limited in length, but there was actually a fair amount of width to work with so Stacy had the brilliant idea of making a table that could accommodate two chairs on each end.

The table is 50” wide by 72” long. The top is made out of various board widths, and I used my table saw to rip 1/2” off each side to get rid of the rounded edges that stock lumber has. It makes for a nice smooth table top—but I lost the look of the random width boards because it turned out so smooth!

I distressed the table with chain, hammer, needle-nose pliers, screwdriver, and a Dremel tool. It was stained and sanded down about five times (no kidding) because I had a hard time finding a color I liked—that I thought she would also like! In the end, it’s basically Rustoleum American Walnut, sanded back, followed by Rustoluem Wheat (we’ll ignore the layers of black, willow, weathered gray, and paint). It’s finished with Minwax Hand-Rubbed Polyurethane and Dark Paste Wax.

I bought a set of four pressed-back chairs off of Craigslist. I liked them because they were in a dark stain to begin with, rather than a medium oak. I painted them with SW Creamy. As I was painting the chairs one afternoon, I kept thinking to myself, “I HATE painting chairs! This is why I don’t paint chairs!!”

But the next day, when I was distressing them and glazing them, I thought, “These are so pretty! I should refinish more chairs!!”

It’s confusing to be me!

I built the benches based on the plans in Ana White’s Handbuilt Home book (adjusted for size). The picture on the left shows what they looked like when Stacy came to see the table…and the picture on the right is what they looked like when she left with them!

I had first stained the benches with Rustoleum American Walnut, and then I used MMS Milk Paint in Tricyle over top. I really, really didn’t like the way the color turned out. Even with dark wax on top, it was a bright tomato-y red, and not a deep dark red like I love.

Stacy wanted them to have more wood showing anyway, so between the two of us we sanded them some more (I may have sanded them a LOT more than Stacy was anticipating, but she graciously went with it), and then we rubbed more of the American Walnut stain over all. It colored the wood where it had gone to bare wood, and it deepened the color significantly. It looked MUCH better, and blended better with the overall look of the set.

At least, I think so!

The table, chairs, and benches made it safely to Portland this past weekend. We managed to fit all of them…plus a copper boiler, four big shopping bags full of dishes, and Stacy’s LUGGAGE (which is always significant) in a Honda Odyssey! And knowing that the table is 50” wide—and a Honda Odyssey is only 49.5” wide…you should be VERY IMPRESSED by that fact!

Stacy has hosted guests for dinner twice since she’s been home, and a batch of homeschoolers besides. One night she had room for nine people, three pizzas, salad, a pitcher of lemonade, and I don’t know what all else!

I feed eight people all the time. Maybe I need a wide farmhouse table too!

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Disclaimer: Stacy may or may not be my friend’s real name. And if it isn’t, she may or may not have preferred to be called Princess Leia and/or Hot Rod. And she may or may not be a hobbit.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

I have been working on another Farmhouse Table for a dear friend over the last couple of weeks. It is allll-most done. I think. It’s way more stressful to build for someone you know, you know?? Anyway, I am anxiously waiting for my daughter to get home so she can help me haul it in the house so I can finish poly-ing and wax-ing it. It’s about 45 degrees outside, and things are taking too long to dry!

Anyway, working on this latest table (#9, if we’re keeping count), reminded me that I never showed table #8. That’s probably because it is nothing really new or different than the other farmhouse tables I’ve built…but also because the blasted thing drove me crazy.

Back before Thanksgiving, I realized I had enough leftover wood to make a table base. So with only a few extra dollars (OK, maybe $50) to buy wood for a top, I could make another table to fill my empty dining room.

And so I did. I assembled the base, the top, brought them inside and put them together…

But something was wrong.

If you really look closely at the two preceding pictures, you might be able to see it. The breadboard ends were crooked! I have no idea how it happened, but both of the ends took off at a slant.

I tried to convince myself that it reeeally wasn’t that noticeable. I actually tried to sell it, at a significant discount, but I couldn’t sell it without pointing out the flaw—and big surprise, no one wanted to buy it then!

So what’s a girl to do?? Well, I ignored it until a few weeks after Christmas. We actually had people sitting at it for Christmas dinner, and we built a puzzle on it…and it continued to drive me crazy.

So my nice big table got shrunk! I took it back outside and disassembled it. I removed the offending breadboard ends completely, and then I cut down the aprons on the long sides of the table by about 9”.

I was left with a petite farmhouse table!

It sold more easily this time, because I didn’t feel I had to apologize for it!

Oh, and did you notice my cute little bentwood bistro chairs? I picked them up at Ruffles & Rust a few weeks ago. I think they’re keepers!

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Time keeps on slipping away between blog posts…I finish projects and then don’t have sufficient sunshine…or motivation…to take pictures! But we are having a break in the rain this afternoon, so I thought I’d snap a few photos.

I’m happy to say that the family room project is at least 90% complete now. After long, long weeks of waiting, the new sectional arrived (more on that later), as did the material for the curtains. While I was waiting for them, I spent some time trying to decide what to hang on the walls…it was not a task for the faint of heart!

I really, really wanted a gallery wall…

…and this is what I came up with.

And although I say “I,” what I really mean is that it was a joint project between me and my best friend in Oregon. We really burned it up over text messaging!

The first thing you might notice is that I chose the white Green Dragon Inn sign. It was the first one I made, but originally I thought it blended in to the wall too much, so I made the wood one (shown here). I will admit that I actually liked it better, but with some of the other things I chose to put on the wall, the white sign ended up working better.

For example, I hung an old printer’s tray on the wall on the left of the television.

It made a fun spot to show off a few of my husband’s Lego minifigs! (You can see where the rest of the Legos reside in this room here). If I had used the wood Green Dragon sign, I think it would have been a little too much in close quarters.

As I mentioned before, my goal in decorating this room was to blend some of my husband’s geeky style with some of my vintage style. It was a challenge! I purchased some artwork on Etsy, though, that was a perfect fit.

I surprised my husband with them, and he loved them as much as I did. They are framed in IKEA Virserum frames.

I made a “Shield of Gondor” to complete this portion of the wall. It was fun to have my husband get excited about something I was making!

The other side was simpler…I knew I wanted to include my much-loved metal clock to bring in another industrial element in the room. It took up a lot of real estate! The “B” is one of those cardboard letters from JoAnn’s. I mod-podged aluminum foil onto it ages ago (like this project), but never had the perfect place to put it…until now!

This is the wall you see as you enter the room, and it makes me smile now. I love my printer’s console, and I love my quirky gallery wall. It’s just so nice to have this room turning into something other than a dumping ground!

And here’s a little fun for you. When I ordered my LOTR Travel Posters, a little mix-up led to me receiving TWO Rohan posters. (8x10 size) I don’t really need both, so I would love for the extra one to go to someone else who will love it. If you’re interested, either for yourself or someone you love, just leave a comment on this posttelling me who you would like to have the poster for, and I will choose a winner at random on Sunday (or thereabouts).

Friday, February 7, 2014

My family room project (first mentioned here) has been stalled out as we wait for my NEW COUCH! I’ll share more about that later, but let me just warn you…don’t put too much faith in shipping company estimates that send you in a panic to get rid of your old furniture…or you just might spend 2 1/2 weeks with NO furniture!

So the goal for my family room was to be a little more “fun & funky” than is my normal modus operandi. If it were up to my husband and/or children, the whole room would look like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Or a Tardis. Or a wood-elf lodge.

I’m already compromising by including Legos in the room (you can see my IKEA hack display shelf here)….but it’s NOT going to be a Tardis room! However, I am trying to work with a bit of a theme, and I call it:

Vintage Geek

Something for him (husband), something for them (kids), and something for me (me!).

With that in mind, I worked on a little wall art, loosely inspired by the Ballard Designs Pruvost plaque. I’ve loved the shape of it for.ev.er. So I used some scrap plywood to make a similar-shaped sign, which is supposed to look like an ooooooollllllddd (that’s the vintage part) inn sign.

I made the white one first, but then I wasn’t sure if it went in the room as well as I wanted…so then I made the wood one.

So how about an opinion? Which one do YOU like better??

And then a question: are you geeky enough to know what the “Green Dragon Inn” comes from??

Note: I have been getting some questions lately that I can’t respond to because they come from “No-Reply Bloggers!” If you’ve asked me a question and I have answered, please try again, but include an e-mail address!